Generation of tunable infrared femtosecond pulses via parametric visible-to-infrared frequency conversion

Anotacija

We propose two methods for ultrashort pulse parametric visible-to-infrared frequency conversion, that are directly applied to extend the tuning range of a commercial Ti:sapphire laser-noncollinear optical parametric amplifier system. The first method is based on broadband noncollinear four-wave optical parametric amplification in fused silica, and the second is based on cascaded three-wave parametric interaction in a single BBO crystal. A proof-of-principle experiments demonstrate generation of sub-30-fs, ~20 μJ pulses, broadly tunable across the infrared (1–3 μm) spectral range. Keywords: optical parametric amplifiers, femtosecond pulses, infrared, four-wave mixing, difference frequency generation